[Closed] FrameMaker 7.x/8 Feature Requests

Report · Aug 19, 2002

Time to start entering these. If you are unsure about whether FM has the feature yet, please do some research and figure it out before posting.

Please don't post requests for assistance in here, either.

Cheers,

Sean

Report · Sep 26, 2003

> Does Adobe want Frame to remain a niche tool? Who knows, but with a
> 2-year development cycle that yields very little with each release,
> it's hard to know what their true intentions may be.

They have no intentions, except for making money out of the product.
Who uses it or why isn't a concern for the "bean counters".

> [...] Frame should be even more powerful than ever. As a technical
> writer, Frame still remains the only tool I truly rely on for
> producing manuals and other technical documentation. I couldn't
> imagine working in a Word shop, [...]

That's the problem. As long as the users continue to upgrade and
buy new versions of FM, Adobe will continue to make the money they
need. They don't need to correct mistakes and improve features, if
the users *still* are faithful to the product. The only way things
will change is if the FM users stop buying the upgrades and/or
migrate to other products. Or rather, if some of the major license
holders start making plans for migrating unless Adobe listens to
their demands for improvement.

The best thing *you* can do is to communicate to Adobe that you
will stop upgrading and start a migration plan to something else.
The more licenses you represent, and the higher levels of
management involved, the better. But if FM truly is your only
choice, then you're stuck with abysmal product management.
(Unless Adobe India comes up with a new ropetrick...)

In other words, Adobe needs some serious competetion.

--
/Thomas Michanek, FrameMaker/UNIX/MIF expert
Technical Communicator, Uppsala, Sweden
http://go.to/framers/

Report · Sep 29, 2003

Designer windows made into one window showing all attributes rather than the small window with a pull down to change to different sets of attributes. One larger window showing all attributes would save loads of time.
Thumbnails for Body, Master and Reference pages would make navigation through long docs easier.
Being able to change the background or 'paper' color to something other than white.
Tables in Landscape pages should be clickable to edit the cells.
Fix the screen redraw issue. I'm wearing out the l key.

Oh yeah, one more small thing.

MAC OSX NATIVE!!!!!!!!
MAC OSX NATIVE!!!!!!!!
MAC OSX NATIVE!!!!!!!!

Darrel

Report · Sep 30, 2003

I'd be surprised if Adobe did not have at least an interim OS X release. I guess we'll see.

Report · Oct 09, 2003

An interim release is very likely before version 8. An Adobe rep recently told me that there was a major backlash when Frame 7 shipped without multiple undo and they plan on adding in a point release. Whether they add OS X is unknown, but I'm very skeptical.

Report · Oct 09, 2003

Hehe. "I'd be surprised if Adobe did not have at least an interim OS X release."<br /><br />Am putting money on it--and no, I don't know for sure any more than most of you. <g>

Report · Oct 10, 2003

I would love to see a simple way to change the tracking and leading in text. Simple shortcut keys that increase and decrease the tracking/leading by one point per time you type the shortcut key. That would be WONDERFUL!

Report · Oct 13, 2003

MACOS X NATIVE !!!!!!!!!! (please)

Report · Oct 14, 2003

MacOSX...pretty please. Even that miserable program known as Quark has an OSX version now. Everything has an OSX version...except FM.

I'll bet 30 quatloos on the new OSX version...

Report · Oct 14, 2003

Proper (i.e. vector) SVG support!

It is a major pain that SVGs are rasterised when you generate a PDF.

The whole point of SVG graphics is that they can contain resolution independent vectors, like PDF.

So you should be able to embed SVG into a framemaker document, and generate a PDF including a vector version of the image. (giving you a small file size, together with resolution independence)

The current SVG support is somewhat pointless since, if it is going to be rasterised, you might as well embed a TIFF.

Matt Cockerill

Report · Oct 20, 2003

A Heading Structure window that will enable me to grab a heading and/or sub-headings and move to another area in a chapter.

Spell check in the body and master pages at the same time.

Better viewing of eps files in a frame. When I import an Illustrator eps I cannot see a clear drawing.

A glossary feature that allows you to add a description and then create a glossary chapter automatically.

VB macros

Report · Oct 21, 2003

** Mac OS X Native ** -- Frame would join the rest of the adobe suite, and i would never have to launch Classic or kluge it again. (At the veeeery least, a patch such as the one issued for Acro 5 so it would run under X)

Oh -- and the pesky Control-L screen redraw issue that's been around since F4 would be great to have fixed. :)

Report · Oct 21, 2003

More informative color definition error messages.

I'm converting someone else's work into new templates. The original book reports "inconsistent color definitions" when compiled. I can easily clear this message by opening one chapter file from the book, then importing color definitions from that file into the other files in the book. The error message then goes away.

It would be nice, however, to have FrameMaker provide some clearer explanation of what "inconsistencies" exist in the color definitions. The current one-line error messages clearly come from a bygone age when storing error message strings was thought to consume too much "precious" RAM. I think in today's world of multi-giga-byte systems, these messages (indeed all FrameMaker error messages) could be safely expanded so as to be more informative...

Cheers & thanks,
Riley

Report · Oct 22, 2003

Bring the paragraph designer (and maybe some others as well, I'm just commenting on this one) into the Windows world: specifically, if I want to change font size or spacing, FM now highlights the area, but instead of replacing it when I type in a new value as seems to be common in Windows, FM now adds the new value, and I must manually delete the old value, or end up with some horrendous point or spacing value.

FM7, fully patched, W2000, also patched.

Report · Oct 22, 2003

I don't know whether this is FM or Acrobat, but that's the same company, so here goes. The FM7 pdfing capability is great, but I do wish FM could check into whether the file is open in Acrobat a little sooner. I do sometimes leave the pdf open, then when I generate a new one, I have to wait until it prints to the Distiller before I get the message, close the existing one, dumb, dumb.

Report · Oct 27, 2003

Table Headers. When a table has a header with text in it and a table format is applied which specifies no table header, the header text is deleted. When applying different table formats it would be helpful if the header just became "hidden" when a no header table format is applied.

Report · Oct 27, 2003

When using the Apply Master Pages function. Add the ability to use None or a custom Master Page when no paragraph tags are present. Would make blank pages easy to handle.

Report · Oct 28, 2003

Okay,

Am at the FrameUsers conference, in West Palm Beach, Florida. For the first time, am meeting gurus like Dov Isaacs, Shlomo Perets, the FM product manager, Karl Matthews, wow and does that list go on ... I am learning as much from the attendees as the presenters.

So, the news is that Adobe is telling of a FM 7 upgrade, a point release (it wasn't announced as "7.1" but that's a good bet). There's more to that ... However, it looks very much like I'll be needing a hat-shaped cake ....

Cheers,

Sean

Report · Oct 29, 2003

I'd like "shrinkwrap graphic" to have a menu item and keystroke shortcut, not only esc-m-p. I use it all the time, and it's awkward to explain to others "the feature you need isn't on a menu, but here's what you do..."

I'd like the keyboard shortcuts on Windows to be closer to those on the Mac. The bug (in Frame 6 Windows, the only version I have access to) where control-down takes you to the END of the paragraph rather than the beginning of the next paragraph makes it impossible to scroll through paragraph by paragraph. The lack of a proper "screen down" is also irritating.

I'd like tabs fixed so that tables of contents can be designed where the page number is to the right of the paragraph's right margin. This could be done way back in Frame 3. Or, make it possible to generate the table of contents as a "table", where this effect could be fudged by putting the page numbers in their own column.

The bug involving 2-column pages and "widow/orphan" controls, where occasionally the second-to-last text line in the right column ends up at the bottom of the left column NEEDS to be fixed. I've been embarrassed by this one too many times, and the only explanation I can give to the client is the incompetence of Adobe.

I'd like the option to have FrameMaker not hyphenate words it doesn't know. This would avoid incorrect hyphenations (including people's names) -- and the user could spot badly-spaced lines and add words to the dictionary with hyphenation points as needed.

With the common typesetting problem of URLs, I'd like to have not only breaking and nonbreaking versions of spaces and hyphens (as there are now), but also slashes and periods. (If I allow line breaks after periods I get better flow of URLs, but then I also get line breaks in decimal numbers which is unacceptable).

I'd like equations better integrated into the document -- ideally allowing tabs and font information from the current paragraph. And allowing the use of Greek characters from OpenType fonts that have them would finally overcome the lack of a bold version of the Symbol font.

I'd like tables to be able to float to the top and/or bottom of a page. Their control of spacing from text is so much better than that of frames, I much prefer to use them for holding figures, but the way they float and how they break two-column pages when NOT at the top and bottom is nonstandard and awkward.

--Rodney Sauer

Report · Nov 02, 2003

OK...if one has a "hat-shaped cake" does that mean there were rumors of an OSX version? The only rumors I heard were that there would be an update, but Adobe no longer cares about the Mac and will not update for that platform.

The ONLY feature I request continues to be an OSX version.

If Adobe fails to create a new Mac version, why don't they just put the source up on SourceForge and let some developers go wild.

Report · Nov 03, 2003

Raman,

Without "putting down" Mac users in any way, please don't even think about Adobe abandoning FM just because they won't support a certain platform.

Report · Nov 03, 2003

Well, Mac users could switch to Solaris or Windows XP. The trouble I see for Mac users *if* FrameMaker remains unsupported on OS X is quite simply that there is no other tool to replace FrameMaker. A Windows PC that supports FrameMaker would cost less than a grand.

Cheers,

Sean

Report · Nov 03, 2003

That would be one grand I don't feel like spending. The font issues alone would be a nightmare when dealing with publishers.

When a company decides to ditch a platform it has supported for many years I do consider that being abandoned. Adobe no longer seems to care about consumers, just the fact that there stock price continues to go up. I own some, but not enough to ever get them to listen to me ;)

I'm still boggled why they can't port the *nix version to run under X11 which is now built in with OSX 10.3. Last I heard is that there are so many low level system hacks in FM that it just isn't possible and would cost too much.

Macromedia did an amazing job porting Director MX over to the OSX world by having much of the programming done in India. FM also moved most of its development to India. Maybe Adobe could hire a few of Macromedia's programmers.

I reiterate my one (and only) feature request: FrameMaker 8 on OSX. I'll take five copies right now.

Report · Nov 05, 2003

> I reiterate my one (and only) feature request: FrameMaker 8 on OSX. I'll
> take five copies right now.

If you want to surround the Adobe corp. office and light torches to demand OS X, I'll bring the lighter. It is the only Classic app I have left, yet it's what I use nearly all day long.

Report · Nov 03, 2003

>The font issues alone would be a nightmare when dealing with publishers.

Use OpenType fonts. Problem solved.

Besides, TTFs present no problems with press; it's the naming conventions across platforms that sometimes need working out.

>I reiterate my one (and only) feature request: FrameMaker 8 on OSX. I'll take five copies right now.

I second it. I'm a Windows user and it benefits me for that to happen. Make noise, start a petition, show Adobe the business case ....

Cheers,

Sean

Report · Nov 14, 2003

Hell, I'll bring fuel and lighters at this point! I'd get several copies of FrameMaker for OS X myself/for my clients right away if they'd get it to OS X!!!!!

I really like the program a lot, and there's nothing else like it, but if they don't get to an OS X version soon I'm going to have to abandon it, because it's gotten very problematic in the classic system for us to create PDFs from it. I'm NOT going back to using windows.

I'd actually advocate its use in place of Word in many cases, because it's so superior.

Please don't abandon us Mac users, and don't forget that in many cases, it's us that gets our Windows-using clients/partners, etc., to use FrameMaker. I know we've been responsible for MANY windows copies being sold (as well as other Adobe software, like Illustrator), even though we're a Mac shop. If we drop it, though, future clients will not be getting it either, and Adobe loses along with us.

Do I ever want to drop classic on my machine, FrameMaker is the only reason I still have it.